Night Light
by Resonae
Summary: Tony can't sleep with a light on, and Clint can't sleep with someone in the same bed. But before Tony knows it, he can deal with Clint's little night light, and Clint can't sleep without Tony being in the same bed. Pure fluff, from the avengers kinkmeme


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When Tony makes Clint the mobile app and names it 'Clint's Sleeping Buddy', he doesn't really think much about it. Clint looks especially elated, and it earns him a lot of cuddling and snuggling from Clint, and honestly that's all Tony cares about.

Also, it earns him about a week and a half of incredibly good baked goods. Usually Tony gets cookies and muffins, but they're upgraded to pies and cakes, and honestly thoughts concerning the app sort of fly out the window when Clint waltzes into the room, plants an affectionate kiss on Tony's cheek and snuggles up into Tony's side as he's working.

Hell, if Clint's that happy, Tony's happy.

Backtracking a little, it goes to Clint's inability to sleep with the lights all off. It happens when Tony and Clint are still in the just-barely dating stages, skirting around with flirtations that drive Natasha and Pepper up the wall.

Tony is impressed with the way Clint's chosen to decorate his room, and finds the nest of blankets on his bed hilarious. He's exploring Clint's floor as Clint watches nervously when he finds the tiny light plugged into the outlet very closer to the nest-bed. "You have a night light?"

Tony looks up to Clint, who's a bright red. "I just – I just don't like it when it's completely dark at night." He says, crossing his arms like he expects Tony to laugh at him.

"You could ask JARVIS to put on like dim lights, you know." Tony says, watching Clint's tight shoulders relax a bit. "Or asked me to make you one. Did you get this off the dollar store?"

Clint pouts defensively. "I mean, I just needed a tiny light. I don't need it to be expensive or anything."

That incident ends there, because Tony doesn't think of it as a big enough issue. Then their relationship keeps moving on, which is something neither of them honestly expected. They start falling asleep together, and even though all they're doing is actually just sleeping together, Tony feels closer to Clint already than he ever did with anyone else.

The teeny night light Clint always has on doesn't even bug him, which is saying something. Usually the only light Tony can ever tolerate when he sleeps is the glow from his arc reactor, and sometimes not even that because he pulls his blanket over it to cover it. But Clint's little night light doesn't bother him, which means Clint is more important to him than his little peeve.

Natasha tells him later on that Clint can't stand sleeping on the same bed with someone else, let alone let someone hold him so tight. Tony is frankly honored.

Later, they get even more intimate. Tony likes sleeping with his shirt off, and Clint doesn't like wearing pants in sleep, so when one day Tony crawls to bed and finds Clint sleeping, curled up near the cheap night light, without pants, he throws his shirt off, snuggles against Clint and falls asleep almost immediately.

To be honest, Tony doesn't even notice the night light doesn't really get turned on anymore.

Tony first notices Clint's obsession with his reactor when one day he's working in his lab with his shirt off. Clint walks in, sits down and stares at Tony's chest. He doesn't even bother hiding it, and when Tony walks closer, Clint presses his hand on the warm metal. "Does it hurt?" Clint wonders, casting his eyes upward.

"If you press on it? No. It's not gonna unless someone explodes a bomb on it." Tony grins, patting Clint's cheek. "You could punch it, kick it or come at it with a hammer, and it'll be fine. I guess _you_ might do some damage to it with one of those acid or exploding arrows." Clint looks even more fascinated, and Tony lets him stare, tracing his fingers over every groove of metal.

He's also fascinated by the steady glow it produces, which is, in the end, what prompts Tony to actually research the exact brightness and color of the glow, including the patterns in which it dims and brightens with his body hormones, and program an app for Clint's StarkPad.

Clint actually takes Tony's words to heart and starts shooting arrows at him. It _should_ scare Tony, really, that his boyfriend is shooting arrows at his chest, but it doesn't. Because not only does he trust his own technology, he also trusts Clint to not shoot anything vital. So he jumps about three feet into the air and stares at the arrow protruding out of his chest plate, numb in shock the first time, then flinches the next four times, and by the sixth time he doesn't even blink when the arrow thunks into the reactor.

"It's solid, Clint, I promise." Tony says to the general direction of where he thinks the arrow came from. Clint pops his head out of the vent and gives him _a look_. Because that's why Clint is doing this. He's testing how much Tony's arc reactor can take by shooting arrows at various places on his chest plate, and so far all Clint's arrows have done is make dents in the plating that Tony has had no problem smoothing back out. "Come down here."

Clint drops down onto the floor, flipping midway like a cat and making absolutely no noise as he lands. Tony remembers how Natasha kept getting mad Clint could sneak up on her and she couldn't sneak up on him. Clint pulls the arrow out and examines the dent. "Are you sure it's okay?"

Tony rolls his eyes. "Clint, I promise it's a lot safer than this." He jabs his finger into Clint's bare chest. Or tries to before Clint neatly backsteps away. "You bare your heart to the world when you're fighting. Even if the reactor stops, I have a fair amount of time to get it back up. It's not like the shrapnel are going to shoot into my chest the moment it stops running." He kisses Clint's hand as Clint returns the arrow to his quiver, pouting slightly. "You should let me build you a bulletproof vest. I swear it won't restrict anything. It'll be super light."

Three days later, the R&D department does a double take when Hawkeye shows up to work wearing a bulletproof vest when they'd given up a long time ago on trying to fit him into one.

When Tony tells Clint he has to go away for four days for a conference in China, Tony literally hears Clint's face fall. "I'll be back as soon as possible." He says, holding Clint's hand and rubbing the inside of his wrist like he usually likes. "I'll bring you a bunch of moon cakes."

He spends the next two days not really doing anything but shopping for stuff to bring back to Clint. Pepper doesn't even yell at him for buying two suitcases full of souvenirs. "Go home." She rolls her eyes at him on the third day, slapping a ticket into his palm. "I booked an early flight for you. As I'm staying home, _I'm_ still going to be taking the jet home. But go home back to Clint."

He gives her the tightest hug ever and gets on the plane. He's never taken commercial flight before, but he deals with the first class, threatening the airport staff that if they lose any of his three suitcases (full of stuff for Clint), he'll make sure they regret it.

Pepper has a car waiting for him when he lands (thank goodness for Pepper), and he rushes back to the Tower. It's late at night, almost 3 AM. JARVIS greets him and informs him Clint is sleeping in Tony's bed. Tony has JARVIS drag up the suitcases, wondering which one he's gonna open first for Clint to see.

He quietly creeps his way into the room. He doesn't want to wake Clint up. Clint's a light sleeper, and the only reason he doesn't wake up to Tony's creeping anymore is because Clint trusts Tony, but Tony still can't be making _too_ much noise.

What he sees makes him freeze.

Clint is hugging a body-pillow to him, but what really takes him away is that Clint doesn't have the night light on. Instead, he's pushed his StarkPad under the pillowcase, and the faint glow of the 'Clint's Sleeping Buddy' app shines through the cloth, looking almost exactly like the glow his own reactor is making through his shirt.

"Clint." He says, sinking into the space made from Clint's curled legs. Clint's eyes snap open, and he sits up, looking confused. "Hey, I – I brought you stuff." Tony grabs the first suitcase and opens it, revealing a bunch of bamboo stuff and panda stuff and gold stuff. There's an ornamental dagger in there somewhere that Tony had thought was _perfect_ for Clint. He opens the second suitcase, which is full of moon cakes, and then the third, which is stuffed full of random knick knacks he'd thought were funny.

Clint grabs him in the middle of his rambling describing the stuff in the third suitcase, climbs up onto Tony's lap and buries his face in Tony's neck. Tony shuts up and wraps his arms around Clint, burying his face in Clint's hair. "I missed you." Clint whispers. "Look at my – look at that replacement for you."

Tony glances up at the pillow. "It's not as nearly as good looking as I am."

Clint's hair rubs his chin and he snorts, and Tony realizes he's tracing the grooves of the reactor, feeling the steady, almost nonexistent vibrations and drinking in the glow. That's when Tony realizes, and his realization makes him pull Clint tighter to him. He kisses the crown of Clint's head, and keeps an arm looped around him as he gets rid of his suit jacket, loses his shirt and changes into looser sweatpants. When he's done, he settles Clint against him, shuts the StarkPad off and tosses the pillow to the floor. JARVIS will take care of it.

Clint clings onto him, his head resting on Tony's shoulder as his hand curls near Tony's shirt. Tony kisses Clint's temple and holds him tighter, and he can feel Clint's lips curl into a smile against his chest. "I love you." Tony tells Clint.

"I love you, too." Clint says, nuzzling his cheek against Tony's shoulder.

Tony knows, because he'd somehow missed it, but he's become Clint's night light.


End file.
